


phantoms in the early dark

by wastrelwoods



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Not Really Character Death, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, this was a mean thing for me to write but i promise i can FIX it, you know because. Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 20:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14553354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: Molly tallies up the faces of his family and comes up one short. “Caleb.” Beau says, and her low, stern voice wavers. “He fell.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> monkey brain: hey what if molly thought caleb was dead  
> human brain with like, feelings and shit: wait no i don't want that--  
> monkey brain, already forcing my fingers to type: what if there was GRIEVING and PINING,

He doesn’t even see it happen, in the end. 

He’s hacking aimlessly at a kobold with one sword while the other blade is jammed against the point of its spear, holding its strikes at bay, and it’s difficult work. Takes all his attention and more. The kobold snaps its jaws too close to Molly’s face and pulls back the spear to drive it towards his throat, and that finally gives him an opportunity to breathe, hissing at his enemy in infernal a simple command to stand down. The kobold shrieks, and stumbles, and Molly swipes through it with both swords at once, carving the thing into pieces. 

It’s a busy battlefield, their party vastly outnumbered, and so all that Molly knows of his companions is the occasional flash of radiant magic or cold mist or red fire moving at the edges of his vision. Once, Beau snatches a bolt from midair and whirls away from him again before he can blink. Once, Yasha steps in front of him and decapitates the kobold he was fighting without a word. 

It’s a busy battlefield, and no one has escaped unscathed. Molly’s side aches from a stray hammer blow, and sweat plasters his hair into his own eyes. But no one is down, there have been no panicked calls for healing, no rallying around a fallen friend to raise them up and continue the fight. 

Maybe they’ve gotten complacent. Molly couldn’t say.

He doesn’t see him fall, is the point, only hears Nott scream. 

Molly turns to the sound on instinct, meets an axe already swinging his direction and brings up a sword to parry the force of the blow. It connects, but better, he knows, then if the strike had carved full-force into his unarmored back. Just over the kobold’s shoulder he can see Nott dashing towards something, Beau swift as the wind at her heels. He can’t track their movement further without the kobold taking a swipe at him, so he puts it aside, summons up a familiar energy that burns in his stomach and sends a sharp pain through his head to darken the enemy’s vision and make its eyes drip red. It goes down before it has time to realize Molly’s sword is in its belly. 

He pulls away and runs towards his comrades, finds them gravitating in the same direction and follows, pulling up when he reaches the edge of the cliff. 

It’s a steep drop, and the grasses at the bank crumble threateningly underfoot. Forty feet below is the churning mass of the river, white with foam, sweeping down towards the Menagerie Coast half a continent away. Molly’s stomach turns at the prospect of the drop. He looks to Nott, and Beau, who are staring into the water with wide eyes and matching expressions of dread. “What’s happened?” 

Fjord and Yasha join them at the bank, and Jester not far behind them. Molly tallies up the faces of his family and comes up one short. One face missing. 

For a moment, he’s blissfully unable to put two and two together. “Caleb.” Beau says, and her low, stern voice wavers. 

“He’s down there,” Nott says, frantic, clinging to Beau’s side and peering over the edge. “I saw him, I _saw_ him fall, we have to--”

“He’s gone.” Yasha’s voice is soft as a roll of thunder. Molly searches her face, sees the sorrow written subtly into the lines of it in a subtle language he can only read through extensive experience. He feels weightless, strange, his head floating disconnected from the rest of him, looking between Yasha and the river. “I saw, too. They hit him with a bolt to the chest, and he went right over the edge. He was out before he even fell.” 

Nott shakes her head, still holding tight to Beau. “ _No,_ ” she hisses. “No, no, no he’s not, he _isn’t_ \--”

Fjord rests a hand on her shoulder, and she jerks away roughly. He pulls his hand back, staring down into the river. 

The river that took Caleb. Molly combs the distant rushing water for some sign, because there ought to be a sign at least. People like Caleb don’t leave the world without at least some _trace_ left behind, it makes no sense. No sense at all for him to be entirely here one minute, cracking wry jokes and thin-lipped smiles and weaving his magic with deft, precise fingers, and the next minute...entirely gone. 

An absolute lack of Caleb in the world. 

“We should--” Jester’s voice is thick with tears. “We should at least...go down there and _look_ for him, at least. We don’t _know_ that he’s...you know…”

“Dead,” Beau finishes for her, and Jester wails. Molly doesn’t feel frozen to the spot, exactly, just that he can’t remember why he should want to move at all. 

The finality of the word seems to have the same impact on all of them, casting a pall of silence over the whole group. Nott is on all fours on the ground, her small body quivering. Yasha sheaths her sword. Fjord clears his throat. Those still willing to look away look to him. 

“We can,” he begins, pauses to look them over. “We can try to find a way down. _After_ we sit and heal a little. And we can’t...we can’t expect too much, okay?” He takes a deep breath. “Keep hope alive, but I wouldn’t….this doesn’t look good. Let’s assume we’re looking for a--a body, yeah?”

“I’m not waiting,” Nott snaps, but there’s no force behind it. “I’m _not_ , he needs me now--”

“Nott.” It’s strange how Molly can feel so dizzy and distant and disbelieving while Fjord looks like he’s aged half a century. “Nott, we ought to do this together, and we’re useless to Caleb right now. A stiff breeze would take half of us out in one go,” he says reasonably. “Just a short rest, okay?”

Nott looks them over with swollen eyes, to Jester limping at clutching at her arm and the broken shards of bolts still piercing Yasha’s shoulders and Molly bleeding from half a dozen slashes he can barely feel the sting of. “If you’re not ready in an hour,” she hisses, “I’m going without you. And Fjord?”

Fjord nods in her direction, his shoulders stooped from some invisible weight. 

Nott narrows her eyes at him. “If you just killed my boy, I’ll eat your heart raw.” 

*

She won’t stop pacing, the whole time they rest, twisting a wire around in her bony fingers and whispering into it and cursing when there’s no reply. Just watching her makes Molly’s stomach churn. 

Beau sits and pulls up fistfulls of grass by the roots for a while. eventually she gives up and grabs her staff, marching over to the nearest tree and cracking the bo against it so hard that a fistful of leaves are shaken loose. 

Fjord watches them both silently, arms crossed. Molly watches him, just as silent, just as still. 

Jester fusses over Yasha for a while, interrupting her own spellwork with fits of hiccoughing tears several times before she manages to patch her up. Bandaging her wounds with watering, red-rimmed eyes, then marching over in Molly’s direction. 

She stares him down for a long moment, brows furrowed, then takes his hand and pulls him bodily towards Yasha, sitting him down on the ground beside her. Molly goes without protest, because something seems to have swallowed up all the words in him, along with the energy to argue. He doesn’t feel like himself, like Mollymauk Tealeaf. Mollymauk always has a kind word to share, he keeps his head in a crisis and his smile never wavers. 

Molly doesn’t offer Jester a smile while she patches up the gash across his ribs and wipes up the blood drying under his ear. He tries, for a moment, but all he can think about is Caleb grinning to himself after he tells a terrible joke, Caleb smiling at Nott when she casts a spell he’d taught her, Caleb trying to hide a look of wonderment while he flips through a new spellbook, Caleb crumpling with a bolt in his heart, and none of it feels real. 

After a while, he hears her sigh. “Molly, are you going to not say any words now ever again? Because it is okay if you don’t like talking, I guess, but you have a very nice voice and I kind of really want to hear it right now. Or at least sometimes.” 

He leans back against Yasha, who wraps an arm around his shoulders and musses his hair, the solid weight of her doing something at least to connect Molly’s brain back to his body. He shuts his eyes. His voice comes out in a croak. “I didn’t see him,” he says, the first thought on his mind. “I didn’t know, I--” 

Jester sniffles, and kneels and throws her arms around him, tucking her head under his chin. Yasha goes still and Molly knows she wants to pull away, sits up to offer her the chance. She doesn’t take it, pulling him back against her side with Jester still wrapped around him, holding the pair of them closer than she’s held another person as long as Molly’s known her. 

Fjord is watching them, now, Molly notes, watches Molly running his hand lightly over Jester’s shoulders while she cries. That weight on him looks a little less daunting now, though it’s by no means lifted. 

“It’s not fair,” she mumbles into his neck. “It’s not fair that we don’t even _know_ if he’s alive. It’s stupid, I just want him to be here right now, with us, reading some stupid book--”

Yasha leans over Molly, her face unreadable as stone, and kisses the crown of Jester’s head, right between her small, curling horns. Jester takes her hand and rests her cheek against Molly’s shoulder. 

“There, darling,” he says, a little of his stride back, though his voice still catches in his throat. “There you are.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dark is rising around them fast. There’s no moon to light the way, either, not tonight. Just the handful of them against the river

It’s a difficult climb, down to the river. All the rocks are soaked and coated in slick moss, and the sunlight is just beginning to fade around them, going pink at the edges. 

Fjord is calling out footholds as he finds them, but the rushing of the river overpowers him. Nott slips and scurries with a single-minded dexterity, while the rest do their best just to keep up. Molly’s fingers are numb, it takes him several tries to keep his grip, but his tail swishes wildly out behind him, keeping him balanced through his scrambling. One of the stones holding Fjord up crumbles away under his foot and he slides nearly ten feet before Jester grabs him by the arm and drags him to a stop, dangling over the churning water. 

After a dismal, freezing climb, they reach the lower banks, picking their way over the rocks as they comb the water for any sign, inching slowly downstream while the sun sets behind them. 

Molly keeps lookout more out of a sense of duty than anything else. There’s nothing down here battered against the rocks he wants to see. Nott scrambles ahead, peering into shadowy corners and deep waters with her shining golden eyes. Yasha brings up the rear. 

An hour of this and the spray has soaked so thoroughly into Molly’s jacket that he’s chilled down to his bones, shivering and clumsy while he picks his away among the rocks. Fjord slips again, and Yasha after that, tumbling into the current and bobbing to the surface ten feet away, spitting up water, half her braids coming undone. Another ten minutes and the sun leaves them entirely. 

“Nott,” Fjord shouts down the river to the goblin. “Nott, we won’t find him in the dark. We have to climb back up and make camp.” 

Nott turns and spits in Fjord’s direction, then scrambles over the next rock without even a pause. Fjord kicks at the riverbank with a curse, and Jester sits down heavily next to Yasha, who’s wrapping her bruised ankle before it can swell up. 

“Let her go,” Molly says blankly, his eyes darting over the churning water without really looking. “She’s made up her mind.” 

Beau shivers under her hooded cloak. “I’m going after her,” she vows. “Not about to let that little asshole get herself drowned.” 

“Caleb would want us to keep her safe,” Yasha agrees, and they turn to meet her eyes with matching looks of utter defeat.

Fjord’s jaw clenches, his stumpy half-grown tusks gnawing at his lip. “Shit,” he sighs, runs a hand through his hair. 

The dark is rising around them fast. There’s no moon to light the way, either, not tonight. Just the handful of them against the river. Beau rolls her sleeves up to her elbows and brings her staff up to vault across to the next rock. 

Molly can see right away that the arc is off, he runs up to catch her as the current shifts her fulcrum downstream and sends her flying back to meet them. Beau crashes back into him in a tangle of limbs and elbows him squarely across the jaw, and Molly feels his foot catch against a stone and shouts, just an instant before his mouth fills with water. 

“Oh, fuck--” someone says, close by, and then the river is in Molly’s eyes and Beau is still gripping onto his jacket, her feet kicking at his legs as the two of them crash downstream, rolling and twisting and bumping into every stray stone across the riverbed along the way. Molly flails with all his limbs at once, grabs something that feels solid but doesn’t stop him moving for even a second, gives up and reaches for the next thing to float across his blurred, greyed-out field of vision. 

This one catches, and nearly pulls his shoulder out as it drags Molly and Beau out of the current and smashes them bodily into the side of the river, holding them there. Beau shoves Molly’s head underwater in her enthusiasm to break the surface, and he pulls himself out of the water in turn by a hand fisted in her hair, gasping. 

“What the fuck?” she’s spluttering at him, and he snarls back at her, and Nott is staring down from the nearest boulder with disbelief writ across her sharp features, and distantly he can hear the voices of the rest of the party, shouting their names. “You dick, you threw me off--”

“That’s the thanks I get for saving your ass back there?”

“Oh, is that what you’re calling it? Look at this bump on my head, this is all you--”

“Your little bump has nothing on my black eye!” 

“Want me to give you another one to match it?”

“Mollymauk,” Nott snaps, and he stops, untangles himself from Beau and looks back to her. “What’s that in your hand?”

*

The stone snagging the other side of the coat is at the bottom of the river, sharp and ugly and hooked, but too far down for the eye to catch from the surface. Molly caught it by one dangling sleeve, pulling out half the stitches in his haste, but it’s a stubborn coat. It’s survived too many years to give up for a little thing like a drowning man pulling apart the seams. 

Beau unhooks the lining from the rocks below and Molly pulls it to the surface, slinging the waterlogged garment over Nott’s boulder and clambering out beside it.

Jester claps both hands over her mouth. Fjord stares at it with his jaw clenched tight. Nott pulls at the worn wool of the collar and slides the sodden mass of Caleb’s coat into her lap. Faded pink bloodstains blot the fabric in a few places. Patches torn away in their entirety, a pocket hanging on by a thread. 

Caleb would be heartbroken. He’s unreasonably attached to the old heap of rags. 

“Come on,” Fjord says, his voice heavy and old and tired. “Rest now. We decide tomorrow if we...if we keep looking.” Beau drags herself out of the stream beside Molly, and Yasha makes a valiant effort with a rope and grapple. Molly’s shivering with something deeper than the cold, unable to keep his thoughts from spiralling back to the thought of Caleb burrowing his face into his collar to hide a blush, Caleb keeping odds and ends of utter nonsense buried in his pockets--gold coins and dried meat and sprigs of heather and fistfuls of mud, Caleb gone and never coming back again. Nott doesn’t move. “Someone carry the little lady,” Fjord says quietly. 

“I can handle myself,” she bites, and stumbles to her feet with Caleb’s coat gathered in an unwieldy, dripping bundle in her arms. Jester sidles over and lifts her, burden and all, onto her shoulders, and Nott goes without a word.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beau looks around the group, a circle of shadowed faces etched with various degrees of shock and grief. "If we're done pretending now, I need a fucking drink."

Beau’s the first to say it, breaking the heavy, uncomfortable silence that settles over the camp. She wraps her spare cloak tighter around her shoulders, glaring into the flickering fire. “Caleb’s dead,” she says, flatly. “I mean, we know that, yeah?” She looks around the group, a circle of shadowed faces etched with various degrees of shock and grief. Lingers on Molly’s face with her jaw clenched. “Because if we’re done pretending now, I need a fucking drink.” 

Molly shifts uncomfortably under his quilt. “Hear, hear,” he seconds, with as much enthusiasm as he can muster up, which really isn’t much. Nott takes a swallow from her flask and thrusts it in his direction without looking. He thanks her with a quiet mumble and braces himself for the pain before he takes a swig. 

It’s easily the worst shite he’s ever tasted. Burns in his nose and his throat and his eyes while it goes down, leaves him choking and fighting the urge to vomit as he passes the flask on to Beau. But as a distraction, he supposes it works like a charm. 

Beau really does retch at the taste of the rancid alcohol, and Fjord turns up his nose in her direction. Jester declines with a sniffle, and Yasha holds the flask at arms length for a full minute before she gives in and drinks it down, wincing. 

Fjord takes the flask from her like its a powder keg, worrying at his lip with his tusk again. After a moment, though, he grunts, “Why the hell not. It’s gonna be a bad night anyway.” 

“Hear, hear,” Molly says again, with a mirthless phantom smile. It’s clear from the expression on Fjord’s face that he can feel the burn in his chest when he drinks, but he keeps it down admirably. Nott takes the flask back and holds it to her chest, looking down at the bundle in her lap that everyone else’s eyes keep dancing away from too quickly. 

Jester hands some iced rolls around from her ever-present stock of stale pastries. Molly picks at his absentmindedly, his mind wandering from one topic to the next in an effort to stop himself from thinking. The flask makes another circle around the fire from hand to hand, and Fjord, of all people, starts to hum a quiet song under his breath. Something soft and sad and a touch familiar, that sounds like the coast he hails from. Beau throws green weeds into the fire and watches them go up in smoke with a bleary-eyed satisfaction. “Are wakes usually like this?” Molly asks. “I don’t have much experience with them, I’m afraid.” 

“Me too,” Jester says, with her knees drawn in close to her chest. “You know, this is actually my very first wake ever.” 

“Mine too.” Yasha prods at the fire with her greatsword until the flames jump higher. “I hate it.” 

“Hear, hear,” Beau grumbles, before she folds in on herself a little. “I shoulda...shoulda been there.” A fistful of grass into the fire. A column of thick grey smoke. “To protect him, you know? I could have caught that--” 

“Beau, don’t do that to yourself--” Fjord starts.

“No, she’s right,” Yasha grunts. “We were supposed to keep him safe. All of us.” 

_I didn’t even see him fall_ , Molly think to himself, and his fingers pick at the edge of the quilt, raveling the loose threads. 

Nott reaches up to wipe at her eyes with the back of a hand, and curls up there on the ground, clutching Caleb’s coat to her chest. Jester stands and marches over beside her, laying down her bedroll and kneeling down to tap Nott on the shoulder, a question in her eyes. The goblin stares at her, then nods, and Jester rests her hand on the bundle of fabric, scrunching up her nose as a wave of magic washes over it and leaves it dry and steaming slightly and marginally cleaner. Nott wipes at her eyes again and Jester takes the coat from her, shakes it out and wraps it around her thin shoulders like a blanket, curling up beside her. 

They’re not particularly tactile people, Molly’s strange little family, but there’s a safety in closeness that they all more or less understand tonight. Yasha settles at a narrower distance than her usual wont, Beau settles with her head in Jester’s lap and her feet swung over Yasha’s legs. Molly joins the pile with a sigh, bundling his swords in his river-soaked jacket and settling in next to Yasha, who pats him on the head but doesn’t forsake her preference for sleeping with her greatsword in her arms and one pale eye open. Fjord sits with his back against a tree, keeping watch. 

The alcohol’s lended a pleasant numbness to the edges of his thoughts, but it’s not enough to silence the uncomfortable gaping emptiness in Molly’s chest. He twists the chain of his necklace around and closes his eyes and determines to feign sleep until the lie becomes true, or else pass the whole night like this. Waiting for something to make sense. 

Caleb disappearing under the surface of the churning water. Caleb looking at Molly from across the room, calmly, his eyes so clear and direct that Molly feels like he’s being flayed alive. Thoughts that have no basis in memory, like Caleb gasping with his face pressed into Molly’s neck, Caleb’s mouth hot against his own, Caleb saying his name like it’s the only sound in the world that matters. Caleb leaning against Molly with utter ease and pressing a soft kiss to his cheek before turning the page of his book. Caleb’s hands cupping the sides of Molly’s face. Caleb offering him a proper smile and a quiet laugh, private but spontaneous and real. 

The chain twists tight enough around Molly’s fingers to hurt, and he exhales, quietly. It feels selfish, coveting so much of one man, when it would be enough just to turn and look and see him sitting there on the other side of the fire, breathing, whole. 

He’s not brave enough to make that bargain before his eyes open. 

It’s quiet, and dark. Not a peep even from Fjord, whose head is listing towards his shoulder. Unless he can keep watch with his eyes shut Molly thinks he might be making poor work of his sentinel duties, but he’s willing to forgive it, tonight. They’re all of them better off dreaming of something better than the day they’ve been through. 

Molly shifts carefully away from Yasha’s side, hoping she’s sleeping deep enough not to jolt awake if he moves. Her head turns in his direction, but she doesn’t stir. Molly stretches the stiffness from his neck and shoulders, and walks in a lazy circle around the outside border of the camp. He’s not the sort to wander off without warning -- Molly’s a pack animal, it’s the only way he knows. But he can’t sit still. Not tonight. 

He thinks about Caleb weaving his silver thread around all of them every night and Caleb waking from a nightmare and Caleb wrapping his damned cat around his neck like a scarf and murmuring soft nonsense to it. He wonders if he’ll ever stop thinking about Caleb. He doesn’t know whether or not it would be better to stop remembering Caleb. 

He’s retraced that same circle a dozen times when he hears a rustle among the trees and pauses mid-stride. 

Molly turns to look back at Fjord and sees him snoring against the tree, still fast asleep. Worrying. He grabs at the ground and finds a fragment of a branch with a good sharp point, just in case, and hears another rustle, just over his shoulder. Honestly, he’d rather not slice his hand open on the closest sharp stick, but he’s unarmed and needs must. Any weapon will do. He slides his back against a tree and waits, still as the grave. 

A lone figure stumbles into the clearing, and the way they move doesn’t scream danger to Molly so much as deja vu. He steps forward to intercept the intruder just as his brain pieces together the clues his senses are giving to him, and stops cold. 

The lone figure spins to face Molly, and it must be some kind of mistake because he knows that _face_.

The branch clatters to the ground, but Molly barely feels it slip from his grasp, he’s dizzy, he’s staring with something that must look like abject wonder, and the intruder shuffles uncomfortably, wet hair plastered to his face, mud in his beard, one hand clutching at the broken-off bolt pierced through his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you have seen my coat anywhere?” Caleb says faintly.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly stares. It feels like the only thing to do, when witnessing a miracle of this caliber.

Jester takes some shaking before she finally wakes, peering up at Mollymauk through bleary, unfocused eyes. “Molly? What are you doing in--oh, no, I forgot, we are camping out--”

“I need your help,” he says, quickly, trying to keep the tremble from his voice. “Or maybe someone else does. I don’t know which, yet.” 

Jester sits up, face to face with Molly where he’s on his knees in the dust, and squints at him. “Do you want me to...maybe wake the others, or something?”

“Not...not just yet,” he says. “I don’t....it’s hard to say. Just. Follow me a moment?” 

He pulls her to her feet, and she follows, standing on tip-toe to rest her hand against his forehead. “Are you feeling sick? I bet that river is just full of nasty diseases, all kinds of them. Did you drink the water?” 

“No! That’s not--well, I suppose that could explain it, but please, just. Can you tell me…” he keeps his hands on Jester’s shoulders, guiding her to the treeline, then steps away, “Tell me what you see? Please?” 

Caleb shuffles forward and rests a hand on his shoulder to steady himself, his voice warm and low in Molly’s ear. “Mollymauk, I don’t understand, is this some sort of test?”

Molly doesn’t dare look at him, just watches Jester’s face. Her eyes go wide as saucers, and he feels his knees give out when she gasps and rushes forward, tacking Caleb into a bruising embrace and shrieking his name. Some knot that had been pulled tight in his chest loosens all at once, and he sinks to the ground, breathing freely for what feels like the first time in a century. “It’s really you,” he says, while Jester picks the wizard up and spins him around and Caleb winces and kicks his feet. “Caleb, you lucky bastard, I don’t _believe_ you.” 

Jester sets him down, and Caleb stumbles, nearly pitching forward into her arms. “I don’t know,” she says, with a finger tapping at her lips. “Maybe he is just a very good illusion. Are you an illusion?” She steps back, nervously. “Caleb, if you’re not real you have to tell us right now, okay? Because I have already cried a million times _and_ we had a wake and everything, and Beau tried to kick a tree to death and Molly wouldn’t speak for hours, and if this is some kind of nasty trick I won’t let you pull it on Nott, or any of the rest of us either.” 

Caleb stares at her, eyes flicking from Jester to Molly and then to the slumbering group beyond them. “You...I...I am not dead.” He swallows, repeats it, a little steadier. “I am not dead. I swear to you.” 

“You promise?” Jester says, but she’s already throwing her arms around Caleb again, her holy symbol shimmering at her waist as healing flows from her hands. Caleb grunts in surprise as his bruises yellow and fade from view. Molly stares. It feels like the only thing to do, when witnessing a miracle of this caliber. 

After a moment, the light of her symbol dims again, and Caleb slumps against her. “ _Danke_ ,” he mumbles. 

Molly stares, and breathes, and then senses a change on the wind an instant before a crossbow bolt slams past his ear to embed itself in the tree next to him. The three of them turn, as one, back to the campsite. “What the _fuck_?” Nott hisses, barely visible under the coat as anything more than a set of teeth and claws and a notched hand-crossbow. 

“Stop,” Molly barks, clambering to his feet, and when she ignores him with a hiss he says it again, the Infernal scorching his tongue as he speaks. Nott fumbles her crossbow with a shout, but within an instant Beau is on her feet with her staff in hand, and Yasha’s sword is out, and Fjord jerks out of his doze with a disoriented growl. 

“What is going on here?” he says, before his eyes find Caleb, standing arm in arm with Jester and looking very much alive. “Did I miss something?” he says, voice cracking. 

“I was just about to ask the same thing,” Beau grunts, her hands shaking where they grip her bo. 

Caleb quirks a wry, awkward smile at the rest of the party. “Ah. Hello.” 

*

He pulls the dripping hair out of his face, ties it back, and sits, favoring his wounded shoulder. Molly prefers this silence, tenuous and uncertain, to the unrelenting emptiness of Before, but he keeps a wary eye on the jumpier party members all the same.

“You fell,” Beau tells him, without preamble, and Caleb flinches. 

“I did,” he says. “ _Ja_.”

“You _died_ , Cay,” she says, hoarsely. 

“I…” Caleb recedes into himself for a moment, and Molly rests a hand over top of his without hesitation, squeezing gently. “I am not certain,” he says. “I think perhaps I did, and I did not, and this is the thing that took, in the end.” 

Molly stares at him, and he is not alone. “I don’t understand,” Nott crows, anxiously, pulling Caleb’s coat tighter around herself.

Molly nods in agreement. “I think you’ll have to give us a little more to go on than that, dear.”

Caleb turns and meets his eyes with a slightly dazed expression, before he shakes his head and begins to fidget with his sleeve. “I only mean--the little gray mote. From the dodecahedron. I spent some time studying it this morning, just in case.” He crooks a little smile. “I am very grateful that I had a little luck on my side. It was...a very close thing.” 

“I’ll say,” Fjord agrees, with a low whistle. “Shit, Caleb, you gave us a real scare, you know that?”

“My apologies,” he says, flatly, with one eyebrow quirked, and Fjord huffs out a laugh. 

“Yeah, well. Don’t do it again.”

Nott pushes past Molly and Jester to climb into Caleb’s lap, her small clawed hands settling on his face, brushing over his cheeks. After a moment, she nods, and throws her arms around his neck. Caleb returns the embrace. Molly’s not one for social graces and polite overtures, except where coin is involved, but he glances away anyway. He regrets it a little when the first place his eyes land is on Beau’s face. 

“If I’m dreaming all this shit up,” she mutters under her breath, in his direction. “I’m gonna be so fuckin’ pissed.” 

“You look tired.” Yasha leans on her sword like a cane, nodding vaguely in Caleb’s direction. “You should rest. We should all rest.” 

Caleb offers her a grateful smile. “ _Ja._ Yes, I think that is a very good plan.” Nott scrambles down from his lap and throws his coat over his shoulders in a slightly fussy way. 

“Not me,” Beau announces. “I’m taking watch.” Fjord looks like he means to argue, but she shoots him such a sharp glare that he gives in with a little shrug. 

It’s not strictly necessary for the whole group of them to settle in so close, this time around, less of a need to stick together and more of a desire for reassurance, to stay close by Caleb and be very sure he won’t disappear into mist with the sunrise. Molly curls up next to Yasha again with a grin spreading over his face unchecked, when he dreams about kissing Caleb senseless the ache in his chest is a much more bearable one than before.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s too many things he _wants_ to say to Caleb, and most would be better left unsaid.

He pretends he doesn’t crave a single moment alone with him, because there’s no chance of getting one. Molly’s family is jealous of their own, and there’s not a minute goes by throughout the whole journey back to town where Caleb isn’t being fussed over by Jester or chatting amiably with Fjord or sitting patiently with Nott winding flowers in his hair, or walking quietly beside Yasha, or tolerating Beau’s hovering until her guilty protective streak has worn itself out. Molly can be content to just watch him, for a while longer. 

And besides, he’s not quite sure what to say. There’s too many things he _wants_ to say to Caleb, and most would be better left unsaid. That’s always been the problem, with Molly’s heart. He never learned how to tame it, has all but refused to even try, likes to let it run wild and follow wherever his impulses lead. 

But he’s reluctant, somehow, to allow himself to be lead in this direction. Afraid, maybe, that if he asks too much the illusion will shatter, and Caleb will be gone and the emptiness will swallow him up because he really isn’t strong enough to suffer that loss again so soon. 

Or perhaps nothing would come of it at all, and Molly isn’t sure how badly that would sting, either. He could survive it, of course. But it’s a safer bet not to risk it just now. 

Still, it’s Caleb who seeks him out, eventually. 

“Hello, darling,” he says absentmindedly, foot dangling from the back of the cart, halfway through setting a line of silver stitches along the edges of his shirtsleeves. The breeze is cool on his bare back while he works, but Molly has never shied away from putting on a bit of a show. He pulls the needle through the cloth again, while Caleb settles in. 

His copper curls are full of bluebells, today. It’s a striking combination, one that brings out his eyes, and Molly briefly considers thanking Nott for her ingenuity. Caleb, unsurprisingly, weighs his options and settles for looking somewhere over Molly’s left shoulder. “I do not want to impose, and you are free to tell me to piss off if it seems I am...overstepping,” he begins, all at once, and Molly’s eyebrows shoot up. 

“Well,” he says, with a chuckle. “Go on, then.” 

Caleb glances briefly at Molly’s face, and looks away again. “You are..you are well? Feeling alright?”

“I’m always alright, love.” It’s a strange question to hear, and certainly an unexpected one. “And shouldn’t I be asking you that, hmm? How’s that shoulder, is it healing up yet?” 

“Yes. No. I don’t--that is beside the point. Mollymauk.” He sits up straighter. “You have been very quiet, the last few days. I only want to be sure--Jester said you were in a bad way, when--” 

“Ah.” Molly stabs the needle through with a little more force than strictly needed, considers whether a convenient lie would put him off or if a half-truth is necessary, to settle this. “Yes. Well. That.” 

“I only want to know if there is anything I can do, to...to….” He shifts back and leans against the side of the cart. “It is strange to see you so quiet, is all.” 

Molly clears his throat, ties off the thread and breaks it with a tug. “Don’t you worry about me, Caleb,” he says, with a crooked smile, then looks down at the shirt in his lap. “It was hard on all of us,” he explains. “Seeing you fall. You’re one of the team, dear. We care about you. Quite a bit, if I’m honest.” 

That was too much, he recognizes, feeling the burning pain rise in his chest, sure that his face gives everything away, but when he glances up Caleb isn’t looking at him. “I care about you, too,” he murmurs, and something strange flits across his face before he continues. “All of you. _Ja_.” 

The bluebells dance in his hair, and Molly can barely breathe for the ache in his chest. He runs a thumb over his new embroidery, and revels in the feeling for a moment. Caleb looks back at him, his eyes very bright. 

“Forgive me,” he breathes. “Mollymauk, I have been thinking about…I realized that I do not want to die without--” Molly goes perfectly still as Caleb’s hand reaches up to touch his face, thumb brushing over the peacock feather on his cheek. “May I?”

Molly leans forward and kisses him like the sky is about to fall down around the pair of them. Caleb returns the kiss in kind, his beard tickling Molly’s chin, his fingers twining in the wave of Molly’s hair, huffing a quiet laugh when he pulls back. “Ah.”

“Caleb--”

“One of the team, hmm?”

Molly leans in and rests his forehead against Caleb’s good shoulder. “Maybe a little more than that,” he admits, winding his arms around the wizard a little tighter. “Don’t hold it against me, will you?” 

Caleb reaches up to play with the chain around Molly’s neck, twisting it around one charred fingertip. “I would not dream of it,” he promises, and takes his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> structure is...how do u say...very hard and i will never again force myself to write this much without an outline OH boy . ANyway im @wastrelwoods on tumblr and twitter and I? am a big ol fan of feedback


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